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Under discussion:

Duets  (2000)

Arrested Development [TV Series]  (2003)

Bolt  (2008)

The song “I Thought I Lost You,” from the soundtrack to Disney’s animated Bolt, is intended as an innocent duet between a young girl and her pet dog, and lyrically there’s not one hint that it’s anything more, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking there’s something terribly creepy about the above music video. Maybe it’s that villainous goatee that John Travolta is sporting. Or maybe it’s just weird to think of the purpose of the song and then imagine Travolta being the beloved pet of Miley Cyrus. The only thing worse, perhaps, would be if Billy Ray Cyrus were the voice of the film’s title character.

And that reminds me of the also relatively creepy duet from Duets, in which a father and daughter (played by Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow) perform Smokey Robinson’s “Cruisin’” at karaoke. Now, that song is certainly more sexual than the Bolt track. But either way, it’s just a song, right? What kid hasn’t innocently sung a love song duet with his mom or her dad? Or performed a karaoke rendition of “Afternoon Delight” with his or her aunt or uncle?

For a great episode of Arrested Development that deals with the subject of creepy dueting, check out another clip after the jump. And for a potentially more appropriate, cartoon rendition of “I Thought I Lost You,” go see Bolt when it opens on November 21.

Under discussion:

The Deer Hunter  (1978)

East of Eden  (1955)

Enter the Dragon  (1973)

Giant  (1956)

The Godfather Part III  (1990)

Gone With the Wind  (1939)

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner  (1967)

It Happened One Night  (1934)

The Misfits  (1961)

Rebel Without a Cause  (1955)

The Crow  (1994)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone  (2001)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets  (2002)

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow  (2004)

Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa  (2008)

The Dark Knight  (2008)

The Informers  (2009)

Soul Men  (2008)

The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus  (2009)

Opening today, Soul Men features the final performance from Bernie Mac, who died unexpectedly on August 9. The movie also includes a cameo from Isaac Hayes, who died one day later. Both men join a long list of people whose last films were released after their deaths, a list that includes Brad Renfro, whose final performance, in The Informers, can be seen in theaters come next May.

Unlike some names on that list, Bernie Mac, whose voice can also be heard in the new animated sequel Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, isn’t likely to receive a posthumous Oscar nomination as a tribute to his final work. But as one of the most underrated comic actors of the past few years, Mac likely gives a great performance as soul singer “Floyd Henderson,” enough to fall in with the crop of posthumously released roles we’ve showcased below:

1. Spencer Tracy in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

Tracy died from a heart attack June 10, 1967, a couple weeks after finishing his work on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, which was released that December. It would end up one of his most distinguished performances, earning him a posthumous ninth Oscar nom for Lead Actor.

2. James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause

Dean received two posthumous Oscar nominations, but it’s easy to forget that neither of them were for Rebel Without a Cause, despite the film being Dean’s first posthumous release. Were it possible under the Academy’s rules, Dean could have been nominated for playing iconic teen Jim Stark, but he was instead recognized solely for East of Eden (the first official posthumous Oscar nomination for acting), which had been released a few months prior to Dean’s accidental death. Meanwhile Dean’s costars in Rebel, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood, were each nominated for this film.

3. James Dean in Giant

This film became Dean’s second posthumous release and earned him his second posthumous Oscar nomination (he won neither). The actor had pretty much finished his work on Giant right before his death, though some post-production vocal work had to be performed by a substitute later on, and the film wasn’t to come out in theaters until two months after the first anniversary of Dean’s death.

4. Clark Gable in The Misfits

Like the death of Heath Ledger (see below), Gable’s was blamed on the demands of a role. Whether his performance in The Misfits was too physically demanding or he experienced immense tension from lack of things to do or he lost too much weight too quickly to prepare for the film, there may not have been one single thing that led to his having his third heart attack and then ultimately succumbing to coronary thrombosis mere weeks after finishing up principal photography. A few months later, on Gable’s birthday, his performance was unveiled to the world, and while not as historically remembered as his characters in Gone With the Wind and It Happened One Night, nor one of his three Oscar-nominated roles, it is arguably his greatest work.

5. John Cazale in The Deer Hunter

Cazale should have been honored with a posthumous Oscar nomination at some point (I can’t believe I left him off that list), if for no other reason than to recognize his achievement of acting solely in features nominated for Best Picture (including The Godfather Part III, in which he’s only shown in archive footage). But an even bigger reason is that Cazale was a damn good supporting actor and he actually would deserve that statue. For all the talent he displays in The Deer Hunter, though, he was easily upstaged by his costar Christopher Walken, who actually took home the Oscar.

6. Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon

There are tons of artists who didn’t live long enough to see their work become huge successes. Unlike most of them, though, Lee at least experienced some level of stardom prior to his death on July 20, 1973. Unfortunately, he didn’t get to see his final film, Enter the Dragon, open to huge numbers in the U.S., eventually even topping the box office chart here after a few months in theaters. He also tragically never got to see how iconic, influential and culturally significant his performance would become.

7. Brandon Lee in The Crow

Bruce Lee also never got to see his son grow up to have a #1 movie, too. Sadly, neither did the son, Brandon, who died accidentally from a malfunctioned prop gun on the set of The Crow. And while the star’s then-mysterious death may have helped to make the movie more popular than would otherwise have been expected, it’s primarily Lee’s performance, not his legacy, that has allowed the movie to remain worthwhile viewing 15 years later. Even if some of that performance was assisted through a controversial yet groundbreaking use of stunt doubles and digital effects.

8. Richard Harris in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

There have now been more Harry Potter films released in which Michael Gambon portrays Albus Dumbledore, yet Harris will forever be remembered more clearly and favorably in the role. Even those of us who like Gambon as the Hogwarts headmasterhave more vivid memories of Harris’ performances in both Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the latter of which arrived in theaters less than three weeks after the actor’s death on October 25, 2002. Surely some fans would have preferred to see Harris reprise his role in the subsequent films courtesy of effects wizardry similar to that done in The Crow and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (see below).

9. Laurence Olivier in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

It may have been morally wrong for Kerry Conran to digitally create a villainous performance from Olivier 15 years after the legendary actor’s death, but who doesn’t want to keep getting new performances from such a master thespian, even if it it technically consists of nothing but archive footage? Besides, it’s still better than making him posthumously hawk beer, vacuum cleaners, or McDonalds cheeseburgers. Too bad the film as a whole was such a disappointment.

10. Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight

His performance as The Joker is better than anyone ever dreamed it would be, before or after he died suddenly last January. He’ll get an Oscar nomination, at least, and will probably even win. Will his final performance, in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, yet to be seen or released, be as remarkable? It’s quite possible that if this list is ever rewritten in the future that Ledger will join Dean as another actor with two slots, for two monumentally great performances released posthumously.

Under discussion:

Rachel Getting Married  (2008)

Conservative film blogger Dirty Harry is often best ignored when he’s aggressively railing against the liberal Hollywood elite, but when he offers a faux-populist view of filmgoing that’s so obstinately limited in scope that it’s actually potentially dangerous, I have to say something.

The gist: the cursed Hollywood elite is once again pushing movies with purely elite appeal for awards, and audiences are not responding to these films because after years of reading reviews written by partisan elitists who are out of touch with What The People Want, they no longer trust film critics. An excerpt:

From early predictors, it looks as though the ever-widening disconnect between Hollywood and their audience will reach into 2008. The Visitor, The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Rachel Getting Married… Any of these on your radar? Any of these captured your imagination?…what a sad statement that the films the industry are most proud of are met with almost complete indifference at the box office.

Dirty Harry’s commenters take it from there; the basic consensus is that if any of the above named films get the Best Picture nomination that should rightfully go to The Dark Knight, why they’ll … become really indignant about the tyranny of the liberal media? Not watch the Oscars? Boycott movie theaters? So, pretty much status quo, right?

Anyway. First things first: that Variety story he bases the post on is three weeks old, which is a lifetime in the prognostication game. And let’s leave aside the fact that neither Slumdog nor the Wrestler have opened anywhere yet, and that only a very small percentage of the population would admit to having their “imagination captured” by a Woody Allen film, even though Vicky is still on almost 100 screens almost three months after its release and is currently about a million dollars away from being Allen’s highest-grossing film in 22 years.

Regardless: Dirty Harry chooses to extrapolate two films named in that story as evidence that “the films the industry are most proud of are met with almost complete indifference at the box office”: Rachel Getting Married and The Visitor. I’m far more of a fan of one of these films than the other, but Harry’s assessment of audience “indifference” is misleading for both. As is common for him, he willfully refuses to acknowledge that expectations and accounting are different for films that open on 3 screens and then expand, than they are for films that roll right out into 3,000.

So, some numbers:

(All of these statistics come from Box Office Mojo)

In the five weeks Rachel has been in theaters, its release has grown steadily from weekend to weekend, but has not yet expanded above 133 screens (a little less than what The Dark Knight has dropped to after 16 weeks in release). The film opened to an extremely high per screen average (9 screens, $32,597 on each), and actually saw significant increases in total gross from weekend to weekend during its second, third and fourth weekends in release. On Halloween weekend, Rachel’s fifth in theaters, most widely released films saw drops from 30-60% from the previous weekend, because nobody goes to the movies on Halloween; Rachel dropped just 14%.

Like the film or hate it (and your lean one way or another could very well be partially ideological), you’d have to be insane to look at numbers like this for limited release film and read “indifference.” Likewise, The Visitor’s $9.5 million domestic gross was the product of a slow build over 26 weekends in theaters (never more than 270 at a time); the film undoubtedly benefited from peer-to-peer word-of-mouth, which means it must have captured somebody’s imagination, even if it wasn’t mine.

Even if you buy Dirty Harry’s argument that no one cares about these films because they haven’t made $100 million dollars, such an argument opens up a new can of worms: what is the purpose of awards, and what is their rightful relationship to, on the one hand, commercial success, and on the other, critical praise? To say that a movie which built an audience via word-of-mouth over half a year in theaters was met with “indifference” by audiences because it never played a multiplex (and thus was never seen by non-curious film goers) is insane — I don’t even like the movie, but I can’t deny that The Visitor has been one of the biggest hits of a year from a truly indie perspective, and that its success has been entirely dependent on capturing the imagination of a certain audience.

The Dirty Harry argument is based on the philosophy that the job of a critic is to affirm popular tastes rather than try in good faith to expand them, and that the role of the Oscars is to salute movies that captured the momentary zeitgeist rather than to reserve a place in history for films and roles that have the potential to capture imaginations not all in one massive opening weeked burst, but slowly and steadily for years to come. Critics have not always been good at influencing audience tastes for the better, and the Oscar voters haven’t always made the best decisions in the interest of posterity (cough, Million Dollar Baby). But if an Oscar nomination (or even a win) ensures that a couple of films a year which didn’t have the benefit of Dark Knight-sized distribution and marketing budgets will be found later on DVD, how is that a bad thing?